It’s been more than 8-years since the United States Supreme Court has taken on an abortion case.
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In recent years, the Supreme Court has mostly stayed out of the decades-long battle over abortion rights.
Backers of the regulations say they are common-sense measures meant to protect women. But, that changed Friday, as the justices agreed to look at a dispute over state regulations in Texas and Mississippi. OH lawmakers also enacted a law to ban public hospitals from making transfer agreements with the clinics, which could lead a few to close.
The Texas case represents the most comprehensive challenge to the court’s rulings on abortion since 1993, when the justices cut back on their 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and allowed states greater leeway in regulating abortion.
A federal judge appointed by then-President George H.W. Bush soon placed an injunction on portions of the new law, including the requirement that abortionists have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility, and that facilities be held to the same standards as surgical facilities. Time and again, we see the abortion industry cutting corners – even to the point of putting women’s safety at risk – just to increase profits.
But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in largely reversing the trial judge, said a restriction must be upheld if “any conceivable rationale exists” for imposing it.
The Supreme Court has weighed in provisionally on the Texas law three times already.
Flattery noted that the ambulatory surgical center requirements are not trying to shut clinics down, but “perhaps the clinics should be trying to improve their cleanliness and get up with the new standards”. This comes after the court’s announcement last week that it will hear another challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, testing how far the Religious Right can stretch the meaning of religious liberty in attempting to cut off access to reproductive rights. “Texas is the second-most-populous state in the nation – home to 5.4 million women of reproductive age”, they wrote in their brief urging the court to hear the case.
In its decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992, the court ruled that states generally can regulate abortion unless doing so places an undue burden on women. After the first part of the law went into effect, more than half of those clinics closed, leaving 19 now open.
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If the court scraps Planned Parenthood v. Casey, it could severely restrict access to abortion because a large percentage of women wouldn’t be able to obtain abortions, one legal professor and pro-choice advocate said. Many medical professionals argue that these restrictions put unnecessary burdens on abortion providers: Building and maintaining an ASC is expensive, given the strict requirements regarding features like hallway width and ventilation. Nor do ASCs enhance the standard of care for abortion; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups have repeatedly noted that the procedure can be safely performed in a typical doctor’s office. “Ten abortion facilities are unwilling or are unable to meet the HB 2 safety standards, but all are located near other facilities that would not be affected by HB 2”.
